Reference
The vocabulary of monetary economics, defined plainly, and the GX Protocol terms built on it. Each definition leads with what the term is; where the site treats a term in depth, the entry links to that treatment.
A medium of exchange is the function of money that lets people trade without bartering: one party accepts it in a sale precisely because others will accept it in turn. A sound medium of exchange is fungible, divisible, durable, broadly accepted, and stable in its definition. It is one of the three classical functions of money, alongside unit of account and store of value.
A unit of account is the function of money that makes it a measuring stick: prices, wages, debts, and accounts are expressed in it. A unit of account holds its meaning only if its definition is stable; inflation erodes exactly this function. GX fixes the definition structurally, with a permanently fixed supply of GX 1.25 trillion.
A store of value is the function of money that carries purchasing power from today to tomorrow. It sits in permanent tension with the medium-of-exchange function: money good enough at storing value gets hoarded, and hoarded money stops circulating. Monetary design is largely the art of balancing these two functions.
Demurrage is a small, periodic holding cost on money that sits idle. It makes currency behave like every other asset in the economy, which carries storage or depreciation costs, and it pushes balances toward circulation and productive use. Silvio Gesell formalised the idea in 1916, and the 1932 Woergl experiment demonstrated it in practice.
The velocity of money is the rate at which a unit of currency changes hands in an economy over a period. High velocity means money is circulating through wages, purchases, and investment; low velocity means it is pooling in idle balances. Velocity, together with the money supply, determines how much economic activity a currency can support.
The quantity theory of money relates the money supply (M), its velocity (V), prices (P), and output (Q) through the identity MV = PQ. It formalises why printing money without matching production produces inflation, and why a fixed supply with healthy velocity can hold prices stable.
Inflation is the sustained loss of a currency unit's purchasing power, usually driven by expansion of the money supply. Every major central bank targets a positive inflation rate, which means the erosion is by policy, not by accident. The US dollar has lost roughly 87% of its purchasing power since 1971.
Seigniorage is the profit an issuer earns by creating money: the difference between a unit's face value and the cost of producing it. In fiat systems it accrues to central banks and states, and it is the structural incentive behind supply expansion. A fixed-supply protocol with no mint function has no seigniorage and no one positioned to collect it.
Gresham's law observes that when two forms of money circulate at a fixed ratio, the overvalued one ("bad money") circulates while the undervalued one ("good money") is hoarded. It explains why sound money tends to disappear from circulation next to inflating money, and why a currency meant for daily use needs a mechanism that keeps it moving.
Fiat currency is money whose value rests on decree and collective acceptance rather than on any redemption promise. Since 1971, when gold convertibility ended, every national currency on Earth has been fiat. Its purchasing power comes almost entirely from willingness to transact: the materials of a USD 100 note are worth about USD 0.02.
The gold standard is a monetary arrangement in which the issuer promises to redeem currency for a fixed weight of gold. Every gold-pegged system in history eventually broke the same way: the issuer printed more claims than its reserves could honour, and the peg became a contract it could not keep. Bretton Woods ended this way in 1971.
Gold-referenced describes a currency calibrated to gold once, at genesis, with no ongoing peg, vault, or redemption promise. GX set 1 GX unit = 1 gram of gold at activation as a conversion bridge for price discovery, not as a standing claim on metal. The distinction from gold-backed is structural: a calibration creates no contract that can break.
A stablecoin is a token pegged to a fiat currency, most often the US dollar. It digitises access to fiat and inherits every property of the currency it tracks, including its continuous loss of purchasing power. It is a wrapper over existing financial plumbing rather than a redesign of the instrument itself.
A central bank digital currency (CBDC) is a digital form of a national fiat currency issued directly by its central bank. It modernises the rails while preserving the monetary properties of the underlying fiat, including inflation by policy, and it concentrates transaction visibility in the issuing state.
Financial inclusion is the ability of people to access basic financial services: an account, payments, savings, credit. Roughly 1.4 billion adults remain unbanked (World Bank Global Findex). Grant-based distribution addresses the deepest barrier, which is not geography but the requirement to already have money before the system will serve you.
A remittance is money a migrant worker sends home. The global average cost of sending USD 200 sits above 6% (World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide), a USD 48 to 53 billion annual drain on the populations least able to bear it. GX person-to-person transfers cost at most 0.025%, about one US cent on the same USD 200.
Monetary sovereignty is a community's ability to hold and move value without depending on another state's currency, banking corridors, or permission. Competitive devaluations, sanctions on payment rails, and correspondent-bank chains all erode it. A single global unit with protocol-level rules changes what sovereignty over money means.
Interest-free capital is financing provided without an interest charge, typically through profit-sharing instead of debt service. It removes the structural impossibility of interest-bearing systems, where total debt exceeds the money supply that exists to repay it. The GX loan pool provides capital on these terms at protocol level.
A productive economy is one where money flows through the creation of real goods, services, and work rather than pooling in speculative holdings. The measure of a currency in such an economy is not its exchange rate but how much production and exchange it enables per unit.
A non-speculative currency is one designed so that holding it in hope of price appreciation is not the rational strategy. GX removes the speculative loop structurally: no exchange listing, grant distribution instead of purchase, and a velocity mechanism that makes idle accumulation costly.
The GX unit is the currency unit of the GX Protocol. The supply is permanently fixed at GX 1.25 trillion, each unit was referenced to 1 gram of gold at genesis, and distribution is by grant to verified participants rather than by purchase or mining.
The Qirat is the sub-unit of GX: 1 GX = 1,000,000 Qirat. It provides the granularity for precise pricing and small transactions, keeping the currency practical for daily use at any price level.
The velocity mechanism is GX's structural answer to hoarding: a 3% to 6% annual rate applied only to idle balances held above GX 100 for more than 360 accumulated days, bounded between 2% and 7%. Collections split 25% to the participant's government treasury, 25% to a charitable pool, and 50% to the UBI pool. It is monetary policy without a central bank: automatic, transparent, bounded.
An allocation grant is the mechanism by which participants receive their GX units: distributed by rule from the pre-allocated fixed supply, at no cost, upon verified enrolment. No participant pays for their allocation, which removes the capital barrier to entry and the speculative pressure of purchased-supply systems.
The UBI floor is the subsistence guarantee inside GX: half of all velocity mechanism collections flow to a pool that tops participant balances below GX 24 back up to that floor. It is a protocol-level income floor funded by idle wealth, not by taxation.
Know Your Relationships (KYR) is the identity architecture that records verified family relationships at the protocol level, enabling formal inheritance of balances. Together with identity-based account recovery, it prevents the permanent loss that has stranded an estimated USD 300 billion of Bitcoin.
The Genesis Moment is the activation event of the GX Protocol, on 23/24 September 2025, when the unit's value was calibrated at 1 GX = 1 gram of gold and the fixed supply of GX 1.25 trillion came into existence. The calibration is a one-time reference for price discovery, not an ongoing peg.
Protocol-defined constraints are the economic rules of GX that are encoded in the protocol itself rather than held at any institution's discretion: the fixed supply, the velocity mechanism bounds, the collection splits, the zero-interest loan pool. Form is substance: the rules are visible, auditable, and equally applied to every participant.
The stewardship team is the group responsible for the GX Protocol through its 25-year stewardship period, operating under a non-profit Swiss foundation. Its role is calibration within published bounds, not discretion over the rules: the parameters it can tune, and their limits, are part of the specification.
Every GX-specific figure on this page is drawn from the published protocol specification. If a definition here seems wrong or incomplete, we want to know: examine the specification and challenge it.